Great news for any film aficionados out there as the 68th Sydney Film Festival will be the first major festival to be held in Sydney’s CBD as restrictions are lifted for the city.
The Festival which is due to run from 3 to 14 November will present 233 films from 69 countries, bringing together hundreds of international and local stories. There are 111 feature films, including prize-winners from prestigious festivals around the world; 50 documentaries tackling crucial contemporary issues from established and upcoming documentarians; and 72 shorts. Of these films almost half are directed or co-directed by woman filmmakers.
The Festival will also present SFF On Demand, a virtual offering of 56 feature-length films and 13 shorts from the wider program available to stream nationally from 12-21 November.
Sydney Film Festival Director Nashen Moodley said, “This year’s 68th Sydney Film Festival arrives at a historic and celebratory time for the city, as we come together again with people we have desperately missed, and in the places we yearn to return to – cinemas!”
“With major disruptions in cinema releases, the Festival selection brings together some of the best films of the last two years; extraordinary works from major award-winners to some of the most anticipated films of the year.”
“It is extremely unusual and fantastic to have in a single Festival program the works of so many of the great, distinctive filmmakers of our time: Pedro Almodóvar, Wes Anderson, Jacques Audiard, Jane Campion, Mark Cousins, Ildikó Enyedi, Asghar Farhadi, Miguel Gomes, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Mia Hansen-Løve, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Oliver Hermanus, Heddy Honigman, Avi Mograbi, Jafar Panahi, Rachel Perkins, Christian Petzold, Mohammad Rasoulof, Paul Schrader, Céline Sciamma, Paolo Sorrentino, Denis Villeneuve, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Frederick Wiseman, Jasmila Žbanić, Zhang Yimou and many more.”
“Following close to two years of extremely challenging times for the film industry, SFF is proud to be able to bring these superb films to cinemas. To make the program as accessible as possible, the Festival will also present a bespoke program online through SFF On Demand from 12-21 November,” Nashen said.
Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash
